Hi CTIt´s been very interesting to see how you approached to Cross Fit, and made people realize that there very good athletes on that sport, and that the problem was not the sport by itself but bad coaches with terribly wrong approaches and bad methodology!

That´s why I´ve been wondering how would you set a program for a soccer player. Lots of people here think that they are not good athletes, but I have always thought they are incredible players. For example, Zlatan Ibrahimovic has a strong background on Kung Fu and Tae Kwon Do; something one can see in some of his movements and goals. There are also lots of players with incredible speed, I remember Gareth Bale scoring on Copa del Rey 2014; his sprint on that play was amazing.

I have been told by some professional soccer coaches that their players do not need weight training, but after years of watching rugby games I am sure that soccer would greatly benefit from such a similar approach. After all, all capacities came from or have a strong relationship with maximum strength

Well first of all muscle is your armor. The stronger your muscles are the more protected your joints will be.

Second...

Power is the foundation on which speed and agility are built upon. And strength is the foundation on which power is built.

Athletes who are naturally super explosive might not need a lot of strength work to be fast and agile. Which is why you will see a lot of star players not do any strength work... in all honesty they don't need it to be fast and agile because they are naturally at the top of the food chain in these department.

That's the problem. Onlookers will look at what the stars do and generalize that it's optimal for everybody.

Since you don't need maximal strength to play soccer if a player is naturally explosive, fast and agile it is true that he might not need strength training. But any athlete who doesn't have that natural explosiveness will need to strength train to become more explosive.

To be clear the less naturally explosive you are, the more relative strength (strength level for your body weight) reserve you will need to become powerful.

So an average athlete who decides not to strength train because some top players do not, will likely severely limit his development.

That is exactly that I have always answered to these guys; that UEFA super players are the product of a natural selection of the process, and that they can not extrapolate that (No strength training in gifted people that had a very serious long formative process since childhood) to players in the professional league that have just the enough talent to play there.